David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (3 page)

I looked at him. He was staring blankly at his plate.
You can’t remember what muffin you prefer when you can’t remember your own name
. Mary glanced at me, as if she knew what I was thinking. But she didn’t seem to care.

‘When did Malcolm first show signs of Alzheimer’s?’

She shrugged. ‘It started becoming bad about two or three years ago, but I guess we probably noticed something was wrong about the time Alex disappeared. Back then it was just forgetting little bits and pieces, like you or I would forget things, except they wouldn’t come back to him. They just went. Then it became bigger things, like names and events, and eventually he started forgetting me and he started forgetting Alex.’

‘Were Alex and Malcolm close?’

‘Oh, yes. Always.’

I nodded, broke off a piece of blueberry muffin.

‘Well, I’m going to need a couple of things from you,’ I said. ‘First up, any photos you can lay your

I felt Malcolm Towne staring at me. When I turned, his head was bowed slightly, his eyes dark and half hidden beneath the ridge of his brow. A blob of saliva was escaping from the corner of his mouth.

‘Stop staring, Malc,’ Mary said.

He turned back towards the TV.

‘Was Alex living away from home when he disappeared?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. But he’d come back here for a holiday for a few weeks before he left.’

‘Where was he living?’

‘Bristol. He’d gone to university there.’

‘And after university?’

‘He got a job down there, as a data clerk.’

I nodded. ‘What, like computer programming?’

‘Not exactly,’ she replied quietly. The disappointment showed in her eyes.

‘What’s up?’

She shrugged. ‘I asked him to come back home after he graduated. The job he had there was terrible. They used to dump files on his desk all day, and he’d input all the data, the same thing every single day. Plus the pay was awful. He deserved a better job than that.’

‘But he didn’t want to come back?’

‘He was qualified to degree level. He had a first in

‘But he didn’t want to come back?’ I asked again.

‘No. He wanted to stay there.’

‘Why?’

‘He’d built a life for himself in Bristol, I suppose.’

‘What about after he disappeared – you never spoke to him?’

‘No.’

‘Not even by telephone?’

‘Never,’ Mary reaffirmed, quieter this time.

I made her run over her story again. Where she saw Alex. When. How long she followed him for. What he looked like. What he was wearing and, finally, where she lost him. It didn’t leave me a lot to go on.

‘So, Alex disappeared for five years, and then died in a car crash –’ I glanced at my pad ‘– just over a year ago, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Where did he crash the car?’

‘Just outside Bristol, up towards the motorway.’

‘What happened with the car?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘No personal items were retrieved from it?’

‘It was just a shell.’

I moved on. ‘Did Alex have a bank account?’

‘Did he withdraw any money before he left?’

‘Half of his trust fund.’

‘Which was how much?’

‘Five thousand pounds.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Did you check his statements?’

‘Regularly – but it was pointless. He left his card behind when he went, and he never applied for a replacement as far as I know.’

‘Did he have a girlfriend?’

‘Yes.’

‘Down in Bristol?’

Mary nodded.

‘Is she still there?’

‘No,’ Mary said. ‘Her parents live in north London. After Alex disappeared, Kathy moved back there.’

‘Have you spoken to her at all?’

‘Not since the funeral.’

‘You never spoke to her after that?’

‘He was dead. We had nothing to talk about.’

I paused. Let her gather herself again.

‘So, did he meet Kathy at university?’

‘No. They met at a party Alex went to in London. When he went to uni, she followed him down there.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She worked as a waitress in one of the restaurants close to the campus.’

I took down her address. I’d have to invent a plausible

As if reading my mind, Mary said, ‘What are you going to tell her?’

‘The same as I’ll tell everyone. That you’ve asked me to try and put a timetable together of your son’s last movements. There’s some truth in that, anyway. You would like to know.’

She nodded. ‘I would, yes.’

Mary got up and went to a drawer in the living room. She pulled it open and took out a letter-sized envelope with an elastic band around it. She looked at it for a moment, then pushed the drawer shut and returned, laying the envelope down in front of me on the table.

‘I hope you can see now that this isn’t a joke,’ she said, and opened a corner of it so I could see the money inside.

I laid my hand over the envelope and pulled it towards me, watching Mary as she followed the cash across the table.

‘Why do you think Alex only took half of the money with him?’

She looked up from the envelope and for a moment seemed unsure of the commitment she’d just made. Perhaps now the baton had been passed on, she’d had a moment of clarity about everything she’d asked me to do – and everything she believed she’d seen.

I repeated the question. ‘Why only half?’

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe that was all he could get out at once. Or maybe he just needed enough to give him a

‘Do you think he became bored of it?’

She shrugged and bowed her head.

I watched her for a moment, and realized there were two mysteries: why Mary believed she had seen Alex walking around more than a year after he’d died; and why Alex had left everything behind in the first place.

His room was small. There were music posters on the walls. His A Level textbooks on the shelves. A TV in the corner, dust on the screen, and a VCR next to it with old tapes perched on top. I went through them. Alex had had a soft spot for action movies.

‘He was a big film buff.’

I turned. Mary was standing in the doorway.

‘Yeah, I can see. He had good taste.’

‘You think?’

‘Are you kidding?’ I picked up a copy of
Die Hard
and held it up. ‘I was a teenager in the eighties. This is my
Citizen Kane
.’

She smiled. ‘Maybe you two would have got on.’

‘We would have
definitely
got on. I must have watched this about fifty times in the last year. It’s the best antidepressant on the market.’

She smiled again, then looked around the room, stopping on a photograph of Alex close by. Her eyes dulled a little, the smile slipping from her face.

I nodded. ‘I know it is.’

‘Do you feel the same way?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Exactly the same.’

She nodded at me, almost a
thank you
, as if it was a relief to know she wasn’t alone. I looked towards the corner of the room, where two wardrobes were positioned against the far wall.

‘What’s in those?’

‘Just some of the clothes he left behind.’

‘Can I look?’

‘Of course.’

I walked across and opened them up. There wasn’t much hanging up, but there were some old shirts and a musty suit. I pushed them along the runner, and on the floor I could see a photograph album and more books.

‘These are Alex’s?’

‘Yes.’

I opened up the album and some photographs spilled out. I scooped them up off the floor. The top one was of Alex and a girl who must have been his girlfriend.

‘Is this Kathy?’

Mary nodded. I set the picture aside and looked through the rest. Alex and Mary. Mary and Malcolm. I held up a photograph of Malcolm and Alex at a caravan park somewhere. It was hot. Both of them were stripped down to just their shorts, sitting next to a smoking barbecue with bottles of beer.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t think Malcolm would remember anything?’

‘You can try, but I think you’d be wasting your time. You’ve seen how he is.’ She glanced back over her shoulder, and then stepped further into the room. ‘There were times when I felt a bit left out, I suppose. Sometimes I would get home and the two of them would be talking, and when I entered the room they’d stop.’

‘When was that?’

‘For a while before Alex disappeared, I guess.’

‘
Right
before he disappeared?’

She screwed up her face. ‘Maybe. It was a long time ago. All I know is, the two of them, most of the time, were attached at the hip.’

I looked around the room again, my eyes falling upon a photo of Malcolm and Alex. The one person who knew Alex the best was the one person I had no hope of getting anything from.

I left Mary’s just after midday. Once I hit the motorway, the traffic started to build; three lanes of slowly moving cars feeding back into the centre of the city. What should have been an eighty-minute drive to Kathy’s family home in Finsbury Park turned into a mammoth two-hour expedition through London gridlock. I stopped once, to get something to eat, and then chewed on a sandwich as I inched through Hammersmith, following the curve of the Thames. By the time I had finally parked up, it was just after two.

I locked the car and moved up the drive. It was a yellow-bricked semi-detached, with a courtyard full of fir trees and a small patch of grass at the front. A Mercedes and a Micra were parked outside, and the garage was open. It was rammed with junk – some of it in boxes, some just on the floor – and shelves full of machinery parts and tools. There was no one inside. As I turned back to the house, a curtain twitched at the front window.

‘Can I help you?’

I spun around. A middle-aged man with a garden sprayer attached to his back was standing at the side of the house, where an entrance ran parallel to the garage.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘My name’s David Raker. Is Kathy in today, sir?’

He eyed me suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘I’d like to speak with her.’

‘Why?’

‘Is she in today, sir?’

‘First you tell me why you’re here.’

‘I was hoping to speak to her about Alex Towne.’

A flash of recognition in his eyes. ‘What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘That’s what I was hoping to ask Kathy.’

Behind me I heard the door opening. A girl in her late twenties stepped out on to the porch. Kathy. Her hair was short now, dyed blonde, but a little maturity had made her prettier. She held out her hand and smiled.

‘I’m Kathy,’ she said.

‘Nice to meet you Kathy. I’m David.’ I glanced around at her father, whose gaze was fixed on me. Water tumbled out of the hose on to the toes of his boots.

‘What are you, an investigator or something?’ she asked.

‘Kind of. Well, not really.’

She frowned, but seemed intrigued.

‘Where’s Kathy fit into all this?’ her father said.

I glanced at him. Then back to Kathy. ‘I’m doing some work for Mary Towne. It’s to do with Alex. Can I speak with you?’ She looked unsure. ‘Here,’ I said, removing

She smiled, took a look, then handed it back. ‘Do you want to go inside?’

‘That would be great.’

I followed her into the house, leaving her father standing outside with his garden sprayer. Inside, we moved through a hallway decorated with floral wallpaper and black-and-white photographs, and into an adjoining kitchen.

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘Water would be fine.’

It was a huge open area with polished mahogany floors and granite worktops. The central unit doubled up as a table, chairs sitting underneath. Kathy filled a glass with bottled mineral water then moved across and set it down.

‘Sorry to turn up unannounced like this.’

She was facing away from me slightly. Her skin shone in the light coming from outside, her hair tucked behind her ears. ‘It’s just a surprise to hear his name again after all this time.’

I nodded. ‘I think Mary feels like she needs some closure on his disappearance. She wants to know where he went for those five years.’

Kathy nodded. ‘I can understand that.’

We pulled a couple of chairs out and sat down. I placed my notepad between us, so she could see I was ready to start.

‘So, you and Alex met at a party?’

‘You liked him from the beginning?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah, we really clicked.’

‘Which was why you ended up following him to Bristol?’

‘I applied for a job there. It was supposed to be a marketing position. Alex had already got his place at university, and I wanted to be close to him. It made sense.’

‘What happened?’

‘It wasn’t marketing. It was cold-calling; selling central heating. I gave it a week. In the interview, the MD told me I could earn in commission what my friends earned in a year. I never stuck around long enough to find out.’

‘So, you started waitressing?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did the two of you use to do together?’

‘We used to go away a lot. Alex loved the sea.’

‘You used to go to the coast?’

She nodded.

‘How often?’

‘Most weekends. Some weeks too. After uni, Alex got a job in an insurance company. He had a kind of love-hate thing with it. Some Monday mornings he wouldn’t want to go in. So we bought an old VW Camper van and took off when we wanted.’

‘Did his parents know about him skipping work?’

‘No.’

‘They were pretty good to me there. They let me come and go as I pleased – they sometimes even let me choose my own hours. So, if we disappeared for a couple of days, when I got back I worked for a couple of days to make up for it. The pay was terrible, but it was useful.’

She drifted off for a moment. I waited for her to come back.

‘What did you think of Alex’s dad?’

She shrugged. ‘He was always very pleasant to me.’

‘Did Alex ever tell you what they talked about?’

‘Not really. Not what they talked about. More where they went and what they did. I’m sure if there was anything worth knowing, he’d have told me.’

I nodded.

‘Alex didn’t contact you in the five years before he died?’

‘No.’ A pause. ‘At first, I just used to wait by the phone, from the moment I got home until three or four o’clock in the morning, begging, praying for him to call. But he never did.’